[Open-access] HEFCE (UK) seeking advice on open access & open data research evaluation

Tue Feb 26 11:00:51 UTC 2013

Dear all,

In recent times in the UK we've had a House of Lords inquiry, and
a Department for Business, Innovation & Skills inquiry to which the Open
Knowledge Foundation and others have contributed evidence & advice to help
guide policy.

Well, there's now *another *consultation open. This time it's the Higher
Education Funding Council for England
<http://www.hefce.ac.uk/about/>(HEFCE) who do the job evaluating &
rating the quality of academic research
output in England (the 'REF <http://www.ref.ac.uk/>' process).

Their call for advice on open
access<http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2013/name,78750,en.html>
in
the context of the REF is interesting and certainly worthy of contribution
from our community (anyone can submit a relevant statement) - I should
particularly draw your attention to the section on OPEN DATA:

24. As a principle, we support the sharing of research data as an important
approach to further
increasing the effectiveness of the research process. However, while we
expect to see
considerable progress in the provision of access to data which are
pertinent to those publications
submitted in a future REF, we do not consider it feasible at present to
make this a formal
requirement.
25. With the Research Councils and the Research Transparency Sector Board,
we are giving
consideration to the issues involved in increasing access to research data.
We are committed to
working in dialogue with the sector to develop fair and balanced mechanisms
to achieve this aim.

*We invite comment on whether respondents feel this is the appropriate
approach or*
*whether they feel that sufficient progress has in fact been made to
implement a*
*requirement for open data as well. We will consider any representations
that such a*
*requirement may reasonably now be developed but would also need advice on
how this*
*might be achieved.*

*[me:] Has sufficient progress been made in science so that Open Data
research outputs must be made available for research evaluation?
*
The recent US OSTP OA policy seemed to indicate that open data has
certainly 'arrived'. Moreover, if we *don't* reward or evaluate academics
for data sharing - this rather limits their incentives to do so.

Even if you don't want to submit a comment to HEFCE yourself about this,
perhaps it would be worth discussing the issues on-list?

The deadline for submissions is the 25th of March, so we have plenty of
time.

Best,

Ross

-- 
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Ross Mounce
PhD Student & Open Knowledge Foundation Panton Fellow
Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group
University of Bath, 4 South Building, Lab 1.07
http://about.me/rossmounce
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